Christopher Ward marks 10 years with SH21 calibre

Christopher Ward has celebrated its 10th Anniversary by taking the wraps off of its first in-house movement housed inside an elegant new three-hand watch.

The Christopher Ward C9 Harrison 5-Day Automatic houses the automatic Calibre SH21 movement, developed by the company’s watchmaker, Johannes Jahnke, and Swiss movement specialist Synergies Horlogères, which has now merged with Christopher Ward.

Each Calibre SH21 movement will be COSC chronometer certified.

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Christopher Ward has revealed that chronograph, GMT and moon phase versions of the watch are already in the works and while the Calibre SH21 features a Small Seconds complication, it is not implemented on the C9 Harrison 5-Day Automatic.

Mike France, one of the three co-founders of the Christopher Ward brand, said: “Calibre SH21 provides us with our own unique movement and helps us enhance the security of our supply line. Even more importantly it opens up a fantastic range of future options for us to develop our own family of movements as well as new avenues to fully leverage the Christopher Ward brand. The first opportunity to do this is the beautiful C9 Harrison 5 Day Automatic, housing the SH21, which we also launched today.

“Our merger with Synergies Horlogères embeds the highly developed industry know-how of Jorg Bader and the extraordinary horological design skills of young watchmaker Johannes Jahnke into our new merged business – Christopher Ward London Holdings. Together, we are set to deliver further surprises to the luxury watch industry and take our brand to a new level.”

The three-hand automatic with date features a five-day (120-hour) power reserve using twin barrels and has been built using the Baukastensystem or Building Blocks principle, more commonly used in the car industry, that allows for the inclusion of future developments, or in this case, complications. The new watch retails for £1,500 exclusively through the company’s website.

The C9 Harrison 5-Day Automatic is available in two models; with white and blue dials. Polished metal Roman numerals mark the 6 and 12 o’clock positions with matching hour indices for the remaining hours. A date aperture sits next to the 3 o’clock index while long, slim blue hands indicate hours and minutes with a polished steel central seconds hand on the white dial model.

Chris Ward, eponymous co-founder of the brand, added: “This is perhaps the most important development for a British watch brand in the past fifty years. Over the last decade, as an innovative British brand, we have challenged many of the norms of the cabal of huge Swiss brands that dominate the watch industry and we’ve put the customer at the centre of absolutely everything we do. Calibre SH21 gives us the platform to take our revolution further and strengthens a great British presence in luxury watchmaking. Our revolution goes on!”